Moroccan MPs on Monday observed a minute of silence in memory of the “martyrs of the informal economy” after the death of at least 24 people in the flooding of a clandestine textile workshop in Tangier, northern Morocco .
The employees of this workshop installed in the basement of a house in a residential area of the port city were trapped Monday morning by the waters, after torrential rains, according to the official MAP agency citing local authorities.
Rescuers had recovered twenty-four bodies and ten survivors early Monday afternoon, who were taken to hospital, she said.
Representatives of the authorities, present on the spot, reported twenty-five dead – 17 women and 8 men aged 20 to 40 years -, according to a local journalist contacted by AFP.
Images broadcast by local media showed a ballet of ambulances and bodies evacuated on stretchers, under the eyes of traumatized residents, in this district located in the south of Tangier.
Workers were saved thanks to a local resident who helped them out of the flooded basement with a rope, according to testimony collected by the local journalist, corroborated by images broadcast on YouTube.
Some local media reported an electrocution problem but this information was not confirmed by the authorities.
A judicial investigation was opened “to elucidate the circumstances” and “to determine the responsibilities” of the tragedy, according to the MAP.
The owner of the workshop, who is one of the hospitalized survivors, “will be heard as soon as his condition permits,” a source within the police told AFP.
On social networks, Internet users wondered whether the workshop could have remained “underground”.
“How did dozens of workers have been able to enter the garage of a residential building for years (…) without the local authorities noticing”, wonders the Observatory of the North of human rights, a local NGO, in a statement.
“Clandestine units”
More than half (54%) of the production of Morocco’s “textile and leather” sector comes from “informal” units, including production units “not meeting legal standards”, according to a study published in 2018 by the Moroccan Employers’ Confederation (CGEM).
The presidents of the various parliamentary groups also denounced Monday afternoon “the existence of these clandestine units”, while calling for a “complete” investigation to “establish all the responsibilities” of the drama of Tangier.
The informal economy represented in total more than 20% of Morocco’s gross domestic product excluding the primary sector in 2014, or about 170 billion dirhams (about 15 million euros), with textiles generating 11% of this volume, according to the CGEM study.
Around 2,000 deaths are linked to work-related accidents each year, “one of the highest figures” in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, according to data presented at a recent roundtable on “Safety at work” organized by the Economic, Social and Environmental Council of Morocco (CESE).
The kingdom has experienced several episodes of heavy rains in recent weeks, after a long period of drought.
Bad weather led to the collapse of dilapidated houses in Casablanca, the country’s economic capital, in early January, killing at least four people and injuring several, according to local media.
Often linked, in the countryside, to a phenomenon of sudden flooding of dried up rivers and, in town, to a lack of drainage system, floods regularly claim victims in Morocco.
This is “the first risk in terms of people killed at the national level”, according to a report on climate risks published in 2016 by the Royal Institute for Strategic Studies (Ires).
Floods linked to torrential rains in 2014 caused some fifty deaths and considerable damage in the South.
